The Crooked Way
by Metrophor
Summary: She should have listened when Mercer told her he'd break into her house the next time around.  Skyrim; sequel to 'The Dovahkiin Always Rings Twice'.


****Title**: **_The Crooked Way_**  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: **F!Dragonborn (Dunmer)/Mercer Frey**  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>:** For the Thieves' Guild questline. Read this, if you haven't gone through _Speaking with Silence_, at your own risk.**  
>Trigger Warnings: <strong>Rated M for explicit content, mild violence, and bondage.

**A/N**: By popular request, the direct sequel to my other Thieves Guild fanfiction, _The Dovahkiin Always Rings Twice_ (you can find it on this very site!). It's a lot more polished than the version on the Skyrim Kink Meme; I removed a few scenes that didn't fit, and cleaned it up so that the narrative would flow better. I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out.

Alternate title: '_The Masochism Tango_', because seriously, Nal, you have godawful taste in men (I mean that in the most loving way possible).

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><p><strong>The Crooked Way<strong>

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><p><em>All the good in the world you can put inside a thimble<em>

_And still have room for you and me._

_-_Tom Waits

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><p>Out of all the Dwemer's achievements, Nalvyna thought, finding a way to easily heat water (and <em>keep<em> it that way, through who knew how many yards of piping) had to be the best. Even if it left an unsightly mineral residue, and occasionally brought with it the unpleasant tang of sulfur, she would gladly have paid the Jarl twice as much for Vlindrel Hall had she known it came with working plumbing.

Draping arms and ankles over the edge of the deep copper tub, she allowed herself to sink into the water nearly up to the level of her eyes, and let out a long, rather bubbly, sigh of pleasure. Healing potions were well and good for open wounds and broken bones, but they were next to useless when it came to simple aches and pains. Four days on the road from Morthal, sleeping on a ground full of shallowly-buried rocks where it wasn't frozen (or thawed into a swampy mush), had all but fused her back muscles into an immovable mass, and the feeling of tension unwinding from her shoulders was nothing short of sublime.

She only emerged from her soak when the water had finally gone tepid, and winced at the layer of grime she'd left in the basin. She'd have to scrub it out tomorrow. Argis would have gladly done it for her, she knew, but even a remorseless, pilfering convict had moral boundaries. She simply could not parse the image of the gargantuan Nord -who, not two months previous, she'd seen twist the head off a Hagraven barehanded- with that of a common housemaid. It was _demeaning_.

Stifling a yawn, the Dragonborn wrapped a towel around her shoulders, softly-woven fabric reaching nearly to the floor. Clearly, whoever had stocked Vlindrel Hall had a Nord's measurements in mind, not a dark elf whose height erred on the smaller side of average. Not that she particularly minded: there was something inherently comforting in being able to cocoon yourself in sweet-smelling warmth.

A footstep scuffed on the floor behind her, soft tread accompanied by the creak of metal hinges. "Come in, Argis," she greeted, allowing herself a smile as she pulled her dripping hair around to the front, and wrung it into the tub. Ordinarily, the burly housecarl would knock or announce himself before entering, but she had cracked the door in order to let out some of the excess steam. She supposed she could hardly blame him for her lack of foresight; it wasn't as if she was indecent. "I didn't think you'd be up this late, or I'd have saved some of the hot water-"

Turning on her heel, the end of the Dunmer's sentence caught in her throat, somewhere between her lungs and her teeth. She suddenly found it peculiarly difficult to breathe, instinctively pulling the edges of her wrap tighter about her arms as she took an involuntary step back. The man leaning against the doorframe, as casually as if he owned the entire house, painting _her_ as the intruder, was not Argis the Bulwark.

The stranger -head bent so that his face was entirely obscured by a heavy cowl- went from head to foot in heavy, loose-fitting cloth: not black, which only silhouetted a body in darkness, but rather several mottled shades of grey, which broke up the shadows and would have made it easier for the wearer to blend in with his surroundings.

Even a cursory glance told her that the jerkin and leggings were covered in concealed pockets and pouches, ideal for concealing weapons, tools, and (she _was_ a thief, after all) small pieces of loot. Not the Dark Brotherhood, then: most assassins wouldn't have waited for her to notice them, and from her experience, they were more concerned with stabbing people than they were with removing their targets' belongings.

That knowledge, along with the realization that her intruder wasn't wearing any type of armor, wasn't nearly as comforting as it ought to have been.

"Who's Argis?" the stranger inquired.

Nalvyna had the most peculiar sense of being in free-fall, her stomach plummeting into some bottomless icy abyss, and barely even registered that the backs of her legs had connected with the edge of the recently-vacated tub. She _knew_ that voice; knew its sardonic cadences and harsh undertones almost as well as she did her own speech.

Which was impossible.

Impossible, because the owner should have been rotting in the bowels of a Falmer outpost, after she'd conveniently dropped a lake on his head.

The stranger's hood slid back as he raised his chin, exposing a rough, weatherbeaten face that a year on the run had done precious little to improve. His wavy hair, more grey than blonde, was significantly shorter and more unkempt than the Dragonborn remembered it, and the lines of disillusionment, spite, and concentration had deepened.

"Word of advice," said the man who wasn't a stranger at all. "Invest in some better locks."

In that moment, leaning confidently against the wall, flashing her a faint, lopsided smile -lips twisted up just enough to expose the glint of teeth-, Mercer Frey was every inch her former Guildmaster.

"Miss me?"

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><p><em>Nalvyna's arm was going numb. She wasn't sure whether it was from the blow she'd taken to it, or the fact that she was kneeling chest-deep in frigid lake water, but she could barely feel the hilt of the Nightingale sword under her fingers and suspected it was a moot point. She'd stared death in the face before, in a hundred different shapes and varieties- but never while on her knees, throat torn ragged and bloody from the force of so many combined Shouts, <em>trying to keep from toppling over<em> onto her face._

_Nocturnal was the Mistress of Luck, she knew. Nal had rolled the bones, and it was up to the Daedra whether she'd wind up with sixes or snake eyes._

_She sincerely hoped for the former.  
><em>

_Vivid crimson stained the water no more than two feet away- her blood, she realized, wicking lazily off the point of Mercer's sword. She forced herself to lean back- to look into his face, to confront her would-be murderer eye to eye. There were frost crystals in the older thief's hair, a deep cut over his cheek still sullenly oozing, and smoke rose in faint, damp curls from his arm, but he was considerably better off than his opponent._

_"You have shitty aim," Mercer said, patting his armor until the smoke dissipated. "And you're in my way." As was always the case when he didn't want people to know what he was thinking, the middle-aged Breton's face was an eerily blank mask. The only indication of any emotion at all was a tightening of his fingers around his weapon's hilt; a faintly strained set of his jaw. To the casual observer, it wouldn't seem like much- but to someone from the Guild, someone who had learned his quirks and behavioral tics, the man was veritably shouting._

_"I knew this would happen," he told her, raising his voice over the sound of where, some yards distant, Brynjolf and Karliah were still locked in combat. "Crows curse you, I knew it from the second you walked into the Cistern."_

_Nalvyna grinned up at him, an expression she suspected looked more like a rictus of pain. Possibly because it was. "I have a knack for unnecessarily complicating things," she rasped. "Or so I've been told." _

_She edged her left hand a little closer to her chest, cradling it in her lap to conceal the object resting in her palm. The Dragonborn always had been a shitty pickpocket; it had been hard enough just to _distract_ him. She'd gotten her arm ripped open when the two had locked swords, and barely avoided a dagger in the chest; if she blew this, she wasn't getting another chance._

_Mercer, thankfully, didn't seem to notice the surreptitious action, though his frown deepened considerably at her attempt at humor._

_"You are an utterly _infuriating_ woman," he snarled, "and it is completely beyond my comprehension why-" He bit the end of the sentence off with a savage huff of breath, clamping his teeth over whatever he'd been meaning to say. "When are you going to wake up? This isn't some pretty bard's tale. I'm not a cheap throwaway villain. And the cold truth is, u_nderneath all that self-righteous nobility and shallow altruism, you're __just__. __Like__._ _Me."

_"...You're probably right."_

_Mercer faltered, anger temporarily supplanted by incredulity. "-What?"_

_Nalvyna shrugged. "Maybe I'm just kidding myself," she allowed, as the water lapped at her ribs and made her teeth want to chatter. "Maybe I really am just a dirty criminal with delusions of grandeur." Her eyes flashed with sudden heat, and the dark elf straightened, every line of her body radiating defiance. "The difference is, I think justice, and fellowship, and honor, are delusions worth fighting for."_

_Mercer stared at her for a moment, and she felt the ____edge of his sword touch her neck____. "Gallus would have liked you," he reflected. "I'll make this quick."_

_Distantly, she could hear Brynjolf calling her name as Mercer drew his arm back- Azura, she'd never _heard_ such despair in someone's voice before._

_Nalvyna didn't even blink. "And for the record," she said, as the edge of his blade scythed toward her neck, "I have _perfect_ aim."_

_At the last possible second, she threw herself to the side, clutching the Skeleton Key to her chest in a death grip. "**FUS RO DAH**!"_

_The Thu'um lashed out with such force it nearly choked her, whistling past her attacker in a thunderous rush of air to smash against the water-bearing pipes on the far wall._

_Specifically, the pipes she'd been concentrating her Shouts on, from the moment she'd dropped down into the cavern._

_There was a groan, and then an ominous rumble, and a glimpse of her former Guildmaster's face shifting from resignation to openmouthed horror as the entire eastern section gave way._

_In the heartbeat or so before the tidal wave of water and debris smashed into her, Nalvyna could almost have laughed._

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><p>Several questions ran through Nal's head at once. Most pressingly, <em>why aren't you dead<em>, _where did you come from_ and_ how'd you get in here_ (although she guessed the set of unbroken picks dangling from his fingers answered that last one). What actually came out of her mouth, however, was an accusing: "What did you do to my housecarl?"

Mercer's eyebrows lifted. He was obviously thrown by the inquiry, but recovered with admirable speed, nodding his head in the direction of the housecarl's quarters. "Big, bearded Nord, blind in one eye? Hit him with a contact poison." Nalvyna glared at him, and he snorted disgustedly under his breath, wry smirk shifting into a deeply characteristic sneer. "Relax, Sondryn, it's not lethal. He'll be fine in a few hours."

She didn't need a translator to interpret the unspoken addition (as he looked her up and down, deliberately taking his time), which read: _that's more than I can say for **you**_.

She found herself dearly wishing she'd had the presence of mind to keep a weapon to hand. She'd been sleeping with one beneath her pillow since before coming to Skyrim, and if anything, the debacle in Irnkgthand should have made her even _more_ inclined to jump at shadows. Nal felt like kicking herself. She'd allowed herself to become complacent, and _surprise surprise_, this was what she got for her lapse in judgement. Sliding along the edge of the tub, she did her best to conceal her mounting alarm, and considered just how much collateral damage she might cause by Shouting in an enclosed space.

Clearly, Mercer could follow her train of thought, because he raised both of his hands in front of himself to display their lack of weapons. Again, not as comforting as it should have been- she knew full well how fast the Breton could move when he was of a mind, and he could have easily concealed any number of dangerous items on his person. She tried to tell herself that Frey couldn't intimidate her, after what she'd gone through, but she wasn't very convinced.

If only the damnable man didn't have such a sense of _presence_, dragging her eyes to him every time he moved. He was practically _demanding_ her attention. And it had nothing at all to do with that infernally cocky smirk he was wearing, or how every time she took a step back, he'd take another one forward.

She wrenched her mind away from the latter thought. It wasn't helping (and that tightness in her throat was from residual shock, **_nothing more_**; and certainly not because in some dark, twisted, masochistic way, she really _had_ missed the evil bastard).

"Actually," Mercer said, his words redolent with sarcasm, "I came to congratulate you. How's it feel to play nursemaid to a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears footpads?" _Shit_, he was getting close; maybe she could sprint past him and run for the city guard if she was lucky (_what, in nothing more than a towel, in the middle of winter? What a brilliant plan, Nalvyna_).

Crossing her arms over her chest (as carefully as she could, without exposing any more of it than she already had), she schooled her voice into as hard a tone as she could manage. "You're not getting the Key back, Frey."

That earned her a hard, mocking burst of laughter. "What makes you think I want it?" She blinked at him, not comprehending, as he advanced another step and took hold of the edge of the tub. She could hear his knuckles crack as they tightened bloodlessly on the burnished metal, and when he took his hand away, she saw deep indentations where his fingers had been. "Have you completely forgotten one of the first rules of breaking and entering? Once you unlock something, it _stays unlocked_. Well," he amended, shrugging his shoulders, "unless you have the key, which I can only assume is languishing back in the Sepulchre at the moment."

The former Guildmaster's smirk broadened as he stepped inside her guard, hunching his shoulders by a slim margin so that they were eye to eye. "How fortunate for me."

Nalvyna was uncomfortably aware that her breaths had become progressively shallower the closer her traitorous company got, in tune with the steady ramping-up of her heartbeat. Crap, crap, _crap_. She was a Nightingale now, but he had years of experience on her, and she had not a godsdamned _clue _how extensive his experiments with the Skeleton Key had been. If he'd had the common decency to revert back to normalcy after she'd taken away the source of his power, she'd have been able to tear his head clean off his shoulders with a Shout at this range. As it was, she was completely unarmed, almost completely naked, and didn't want to waste the element of surprise when she wasn't even sure how effective it would be.

She _hated_ it when he had her at a disadvantage. Even more, she hated that it seemed to happen with such aggravating _regularity_.

"Posturing," the Breton remarked dryly, taking in the mulish expression on her face. "How cute. Let's take score, shall we?"

Holding up a hand, he methodically ticked off each finger."I have the Eyes of the Falmer." (_That explains why Brynjolf was so livid when he couldn't find your body_, Nal thought, sourly. She'd poured her own funds into the Guild's coffers to make up the difference, but to go through all that trouble, only to have nothing to show for it, was an obvious blow to the Nord's pride.) "I have the accumulated wealth of the Guild- don't bother looking for that, by the way," he amended, instantly recognizing the speculative look in her eyes. "And you conveniently provided me with the perfect cover, since I assume most of the Guild thinks I'm deceased."

Including, most irritatingly of all, Nalvyna herself. If she survived this, she was _really_ going to have to apologize to Karliah.

His fingers traced a delicate line along the curve of Nalvyna's jaw, forming a sensitive path from the curve of her ear, to chin, to collarbone. The rasp of leather, butter-soft against her skin, made goosebumps erupt the length of her spine. The touch shifted from gentle to imprisoning a second later, as he caught her firmly just above the hollow of her throat, turning her head to the side to murmur two words in her ear.

"_I win_."

When the Dragonborn found herself backed into a corner, as was the case (figuratively, if not literally) that very moment, she tended to make snap decisions. It had saved her life on more than one occasion: running after Ralof when the World-Eater had attacked Helgen; using herself as bait to lure Mirmulnir into a giant camp; volunteering to fight an enclave of necromancers when Falk Firebeard caught her helping herself to Jarl Elisif's valuables. It was as if her logical mind was jettisoned in favor of her reptilian hindbrain, which was more concerned with immediate survival than it was with long-term consequences.

With a ruthless cutpurse standing well inside her comfort zone, and nothing she could use as a weapon to hand, Nal locked onto a course of action she'd look back on, in the weeks to come, with the opening sentence '_Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time_'.

"Mercer?" Her voice came out a bit slurred, on account of the way he was grasping her neck, but at least it got the man's attention. He leaned back slightly, brows furrowing in a combination of inquiry and annoyance, as she grasped his sleeves with both hands. A tiny smile creased the edges of her mouth, and Nal tilted her head back slightly to return his level stare. "Shut up."

Tightening her grip on his arms before he could react, she yanked the Breton forward (nearly clocking him in the jaw with her forehead, which would have been satisfying but not what she was aiming for), and kissed him full on the mouth.

As spur-of-the-moment tactics went, she could have done worse.

She'd only intended to throw the old fraud off guard for a moment, long enough for her to formulate the next step of the nascent plan. It had the intended effect in that Frey went instantly and completely still, in what she could only assume was shock, but the Dunmer had apparently failed to take 'fast recovery time' into account. She certainly hadn't expected him to suddenly growl against her mouth, deeply enough that she felt the vibration in her throat, and seethe against her as his fingers wound into her dripping hair.

Surprise made the elven thief yelp, and he mercilessly pressed his advantage, crushing his lips against hers and biting sharply down on her lower lip as his other arm tightened around her hips. If she hadn't been reeling in surprise, Nal might have appreciated the ensuing sense of _deja vu_. Somewhere out there, a Daedric Prince (or several of them, in all likelihood) was laughing at her.

Nalvyna had been kissed, and done her share of the same, before. It had been in the years before she'd arrived in Skyrim (only to immediately be waylaid by an Imperial patrol), granted, and most of them had been done in fumbling adolescence, but they had happened. Mercer didn't kiss. He _devoured_, teeth scraping ferociously against her skin, as he pulled her -fingers splayed against the curve of her hip- sharply against himself. When she'd gathered herself together enough to try and retaliate, he pulled his head back, wringing a frustrated whine out of the Dunmer's throat.

Behind her head, the pad of his thumb -rendered unusually soft from the leather sheathing it- traced the outer curves of her ear, and whatever witticism the dark elf had been planning was lost in an audible gulp. Each gentle stroke (_Mercer Frey, _gentle_? The world really **was** coming to an end_) of the digit pressed against bundles of hypersensitive nerve endings, sending a jolt of glassy, shivering pleasure straight into her midsection. The sensation twisted into her pelvic muscles like a spring, eliciting a series of breathless whimpers as her hands spasmed purposelessly against the male thief's torso.

_That snide, superior_-

As was its annoying habit, Nalvyna's rational side intimated that if the Dragonborn had any self-respect whatsoever, she'd stop that wanton nonsense right that instant and slam her head into Mercer's face, _repeatedly_, until he understood how she felt about people she admired who went and betrayed her trust. The rest of her overruled the motion, and suggested that if the rational part insisted on being a killjoy, it could go sit in the corner.

When his tongue followed the lines set out by his fingertips along her jawline -interspersed with a jolting series of bites just weak enough to avoid breaking her skin-, his breath shuddering fever-hot against the shell of her ear, she couldn't prevent herself from punching him in the shoulder. It was an open-palmed strike, using the heel of her hand, and not hard enough to bruise, but it broke his concentration and rocked him back on his heel.

Mercer frowned at her, his face set in lines of profound chagrin- an expression somewhat undermined by the sheer amount of dark, simmering _want_ in his eyes.

"What..." Nalvyna was having trouble forming words. For some reason, her tongue simply was _not_ cooperating, and she had to force each syllable out on the edge of a ragged pant. "What... in _Oblivion_... are you _doing_?"

Mercer's eyes flicked momentarily down, toward where the edge of Nal's towel rode low on her slate-colored shoulders, before rising back to her face. "Don't," he rasped, "start something you can't finish."

In days past, she'd noticed the ground-glass tonality of his voice was stronger in moments of anger or determination; now, every word of his warning sounded as if it'd been dredged in sand. It made her quake, the shiver unnoticeable except to someone standing as close as the former head of the Guild was standing now.

She didn't trust this man, didn't for an instant believe that getting involved with him -now or then- was a good idea; didn't put much past him at all, really.

Alas, no one had informed her sarcastic streak he was a treacherous, bloody-minded fetcher, because it apparently thought that sassing the man was a good idea. "I never leave jobs half-done," Nalvyna remarked. "Brynjolf, for example," she added, in what was almost an afterthought (except for the broad and unpleasant display of teeth), "is _more_ than happy with my performance."

The instant the words were out of her mouth, she regretted saying them. She'd never seen someone's face shut down that quickly, or completely, in her life, and the curling heat in the pit of her stomach was offset by a cold, leaden fear. It had been a low blow, and Nal knew it. She didn't know how far she could push the master thief, and she had a horrible suspicion that she'd just crossed a line.

_Open mouth, insert foot, Nalvyna. Well done. Truly._

For an agonizingly long series of seconds, neither one of them moved. Then, unexpectedly, Mercer let out a whipcrack bark of laughter, and Nalvyna felt some of the tension drain out of her spine. Thank the Divines, thank her Ancestors and the Daedra, thank bloody Alduin if that was what it took, he did know her well enough to realize when she was serious, and when she was full of shit.

"_Brynjolf_." She doubted it would be physically possible for the Breton to infuse the name with any more contempt. "Please. You can do better than _that_."

She wasn't sure whether he meant the assertion in terms of insult or Brynjolf himself, although to Mercer, they could easily have been one and the same. Unwilling to pass up an advantage, however briefly gained, she flashed him a slow, curling smirk. "Prove it."

Mercer's eyes narrowed, as he inclined his head toward her and bared his teeth in a deeply lupine sneer. "Is that a challenge?"

Rationality threw up its hands in disgust and declared that, screw it, Nal could do whatever she wanted because it was _leaving_. "You're damn right it is," she said, and locked her hands in the fabric of his jerkin.

_Put your Septims where your mouth is, muthsera._

The hand on her hip slid lower, and Nalvyna's breath hitched in her throat as dextrous fingers curled against her inner thigh. "I always figured you were cleverer than you looked," he murmured against her cheek, and swung her to the side so that her back fetched up against the wall. The carved stone was damp with steam, still slightly warm, and its rough texture dug into her scapulae as the towel (unsurprisingly) slipped off her back. She hardly noticed its absence; the damn thing had been in the way anyhow. His free hand eased down the subtle curves of her rib cage, tracing the residual marks of her time on the road. When they ghosted across the fading, tender bruise on her abdomen, where a day and a half before she'd taken a glancing blow from a bandit's warhammer, they pressed into it and she hissed, an electric jolt of pain flashing muscle-deep along her side.

Twining her fingers into the dark laces that held his pocket-lined overshirt closed, she leaned back to brace herself against the wall. He might have taken her by surprise the first time this sort of thing had happened- but she was not the same person she had been a year ago, and she had no intention of letting him take the lead without a fight.

The dark elf's chest expanded like a bellows as she inhaled, muscles tensing, filling her lungs with as much air as she could take in. Her dragon blood rallied to the unconscious command, fanning along her nerves as she roused it from its half-slumber. She felt her palms grow hot, tingling, as they always did when she called upon the magic caged within her, forging her intent into words.

**"_Feim_..."**

Apparently, her intruder was more alert than she'd thought. A hand slammed down over her mouth, shattering her concentration and blocking the Shout before the syllables had a chance to rip forth from her throat. Mercer's smile was _feral_ as he folded index and center fingers past her half-parted lips. The scars creasing the right side of his mouth made the expression both curiously lopsided, and more savage than it would have been otherwise. _Fool me once,_ it said; _I'm wise to your tricks now, Dragonborn._

She was half-tempted to bite him, just to see what would happen, but settled for a withering glare instead, shifting her hips to pull herself closer.

"Shadows take you, stop doing that," Mercer grated, unsteadily, and it took her a moment to realize what he meant. Blinking, she realized that while her mind had been riding the currents of nascent Thu'um, her body had been abstractly mirroring her actions. Legs wrapped around his, she'd squirmed against him with her entire frame, and the activity had prompted him to actually interpose a forearm between them, attempting to distance himself between short, rocky breaths.

Nalvyna dragged her fingers the rest of the way through the laces they were hooked around, punctuating the action with a slow, deliberate writhe. He sucked his breath in through his teeth, eyes closing momentarily, and she flashed him the wicked smile she reserved for springing traps (and proposing spectacularly stupid ideas, if Vex was to be believed). "_Make_ me."

Mercer's eyes flashed open, so quickly that she belatedly realized he might have actually been waiting for her to say that. He caught both of her wrists with his free hand, pulling the Dunmer's arms up and over her head.

Shifting his weight so that she was supported by his chest and hips alone, he worked his other hand out from between them to join the other. Something smooth and slightly rough snapped around her hands, cinching them together with a single, tight yank, and she glanced up at them in surprise.

"Is that your _belt loop_?" she demanded, equal parts bewildered and nonplussed. How on Tamriel had he managed that? Even distracted as she'd been, she should at least have suspected what he was up to. Maybe she was slipping, after all.

Nalvyna peeled off the wall with a sound like tearing paper, and found herself dangling across Mercer's back as he hooked an arm across her knees. She couldn't brace herself with her hands, because as soon as he'd maneuvered her into position along his shoulders, he grabbed her arms with his free hand, folding the object that tied them together into his fist.

"Clearly," he retorted, adjusting the carry as he rotated on his heel, "it's the only way you'll hold still." It wasn't the most comfortable position, and she would have smacked him with her interwoven fists, but was unable to get enough leverage to make the blow anything other than a light tap. The Dragonborn was not a sack of flour, curse it; with her head pointed at the floor, she couldn't even see where they were going.

When her upper back hit the soft, pliant surface of her bed, she rebounded almost instantly, using her momentum to snap her shoulders and torso upward- only to find herself slammed back onto the mattress by a gloved hand on her abdomen. Mercer hauled on the strap that bound her hands, dragging her backward until her fingers touched the carved wood of the headboard. For once, she was grateful she'd shelled out the extra Septims for something in the style of Whiterun: she imagined hitting unyielding stone instead of wood and cotton, and suppressed a shudder of distaste.

There was a click of metal as her captor threaded the tongue of her bond through the second buckle, effectively securing her by her arms to the bed, and she glared defiantly up at him as he sat down beside her. In that moment, she was all dragon: snarling up at him, she felt an unusual heat and the acrid tang of smoke, and realized that she was all but exhaling flame at him. In any other situation, she might have stopped to wonder at the implications of such a thing, but in the current case, her mind was solidly _elsewhere_.

Mercer, for his part, simply looked down at her with an expression of blithe unconcern, never taking his eyes off her prone form as he began pulling his gloves off with his teeth, deliberately easing one finger out at a time.

Tossing the offending articles of clothing over his shoulder, one at a time (the way of his boots, if the sequence of hard thumps she'd heard on the way in was any indication), he trailed his hand over the hard planes of her stomach, dragging a teasing line upward to rest on the long, livid scar slashing across the juncture of arm and breast, just above the inviting curves of her bosom. It was less sensitive than its surrounding area, and the sensation of friction giving way to dull, lifeless pressure was unnerving.

"I'm starting to think you just like seeing me tied up," she said, narrow-eyed, flexing her hands in illustration. Even to her own ears, her voice had gone husky and wild, a far cry from her usual lightsome tones, and more indicative of her own interest by far than she appreciated him hearing.

Mercer leaned down over her, and she was struck for the second time by an odd sense of familiarity. The last time they'd done this particular dance, if she recalled correctly, their positions had been reversed. The bridge of his nose almost brushed hers as he tilted his head, the wry look in his eyes suggesting he'd been having much the same recollection.

"I _do_ like seeing you tied up," he agreed lowly. Tapping her chest to garner the elf's attention, he took his hand away, indicating his eyes with the index and center fingers. She could see sweat beading on his hairline, the rapid rise and fall of his chest belying the older man's outward calm, and his ensuing smile made her knees turn to water. "Eyes front."

Grabbing her hips, he yanked her in the reverse of the path she'd taken when he'd dropped her there, pulling her down to the very limits of her bonds so that the leather dug firmly, almost painfully, into her wrists. Hooking a leg over her shins, he straddled her just above the juncture of her knees. He wasn't resting his full weight on her, for which she was grateful: Mercer outweighed Nalvyna by at least twenty pounds, and it wouldn't have been even remotely comfortable.

He dragged his hands down her sides, palms flat against her skin, the sword calluses on his fingers snagging tender flesh, causing the surface muscles to spasm involuntarily. Even with a fire roaring in the next room, to Nal, the air felt autumn-cool, and she felt a perverse sort of gratitude for the warmth afforded by physical contact. When he broke that contact, she couldn't help a faint moue of disappointment, closing her eyes and unconsciously trying to draw her legs up to her chest. She didn't get far, of course, due to the cutpurse sitting on them- and her eyelids snapped back to full attention when he pinched one of her nipples in rebuke, rolling the sensitive bud between the fingertips of one hand and gripping her by the jaw with the other, turning her head so that she was forced to look him in the face.

"I _said_, eyes _front_," he admonished, the rebuke undercut by a note of dark amusement in his voice. He gave the bud another twist, far enough to stray just short of vicious. She bucked and swore at him, quite fluently and extensively, in a flood of Dunmeri and thieves' cant. He only tsk'ed in the back of his throat, rolling his eyes as if the outburst was completely unjustified.

Apparently mollified, he circled his fingers around her aureola and returned to the task at hand, keeping his eyes locked with hers until she was arching into his hand, oblivious to the fact that her hands were still shackled behind her head and that every upward surge abraded the edges of her wrists. Apparently, he was bound and determined to wrench a scream out of her, and would be as patient as it took until she surrendered to the desire.

She'd almost convinced herself that she could match his willpower until his second hand drifted, only the thumb and ring fingers actually touching her, down the path of her navel to her groin. Her eyes went wide as he rocked back on his heels, nudging her legs slightly apart with a knee, and slid his hand sideways into her folds, thumb missing her most sensitive area before pressing down, tightly, on the next pass. Her hips spasmed in immediate response and she futilely attempted to twist to the side, though she retained enough presence of mind to keep her head where it was.

"Oh, you dirty _cheat_," Nalvyna said, her voice several octaves higher than it had been the last time she'd utilized it; "that's not fair!_"_ If she'd been able, she might have kicked him, but all the dark elf managed was a slight curling of her toes.

"Thief," Mercer reminded her, in a tone that effectively communicated _what in Oblivion gave you the idea I was going to play fair_? He slid first one, and then a second finger inside her, alternating between slow, sensuous strokes and driving thrusts that had her rocking back into the scattered pillows, mouth wide, trying to form words but completely unable to do so when confronted by relentless, crashing waves of pleasure. She tried to focus on something else, anything, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply she'd craved this, all of this, because she _hated_ him, _hated_... **_hated_ **_him_...

One last strong drive of his fingertips, two, and release flowered inside her, curling her spine and wrenching a ferocious scream of abandonment from her. She was glad the sensation had blurred her vision into a temporary haze; she wasn't sure she could have borne the triumphant leer on Mercer's face as she collapsed into an ungainly curl on the sheets. She might not have much self-control at the moment, but she had her _pride_.

When Nal finally managed to convince herself of her composure, she rolled her head to the side, looking up at Mercer through eyes lowered to half-slits. She had no idea how she must look to him, flushed and slick with sweat, any shred of propriety or guile stripped away by his own hands. For the most part, his expression gave nothing away, save for that ever-present air of smug superiority, and he lightly patted the side of her cheek, uncurling his fingers against the corner of her mouth.

"Convinced?" he inquired, quirking an eyebrow at her, and for a moment Nalvyna didn't understand what he meant.

When the realization clicked, she favored him with a wide, toothy smile, and tilted her head impishly. "Getting there."

Opening her mouth, she ran her tongue along the edges of the fingers he'd extended toward her, tasting herself against the abrasive contours of his skin before closing her lips over them. She didn't take her eyes off him as she shimmied backwards, as much as her legs would allow; watched the arrogance grow muted and his eyes turn stormcloud-dark in response. Mercer liked to play at dominance, she knew, but he was more predictable than he believed- nor did he have a monopoly on dirty tricks.

He followed her as she pulled herself up the bed, gripping the leather strap for leverage, until she lounged almost against the headboard. He pulled his hand reluctantly from her mouth and cupped it against her chin, lying almost full-length on top of her as she propped her shoulders against the pillows. Looking at him almost made her mouth go dry: she'd seem that same intensity in his eyes when he'd given her directions to Snow Veil Sanctum, and again when he vaulted onto the great statue in Irnkgthand to rip out its eyes. It was the look of a man who'd seen something he _deeply_ wanted, and would storm through Oblivion to get it, if that was what it took.

"Tell me what you want," he said, in a voice that just barely rode on the bottom edge of the audible scale. Nal's mind, quite without instruction, flicked through a series of possibilities, starting with _I want the Eyes, you filching twist_ and culminating in _Alduin's head on a pike_. Somehow, she suspected the responses would not be well-received even under such compromising circumstances.

"I want..." she began, drawing the syllables out and jiggling her wrists in illustration, "...my hands back, please." Her forearms were cramping from being pulled so tightly, and with the initial rush of euphoria fading, she had become aware of some rather unpleasant twinges in the juncture of neck and shoulder blades. The binds fell away in a jingle of metal-shod leather and a rush of blood to her extremities as Mercer, with his longer reach, stretched effortlessly over her head to unhook them.

The return of sensation bore with it a sudden and unexpected stab of pain, and she looked down at her wrists with surprise (and, admittedly, a small degree of alarm). The edges of the belt had cut into the tender flesh, raising angry red lines almost completely around each wrist, and the area where her forearms had pressed together was stained with blood. When she shook her hands, sweat trickled into the abrasions, and she let out a low hiss as the salt caused them to sting abominably.

When she raised the heel of a hand to her mouth, however, Mercer abruptly caught her arm. His grip wasn't painful, but it was decisive, and she lifted her eyes long enough to glance at him, unresistingly, over her fingertips.

He didn't say a word as he pulled her arm toward his chest -careful to avoid touching the raw areas- and turned it sideways, pressing his mouth over the shallow lacerations. Much as she had done, he didn't take his eyes away from her face as he sucked. The wicked humor in them, combined with the steady pressure of his lips and tongue, made her stomach do a fast roll and dip to the left.

_Oh dear._

Nalvyna Sondryn, to put it mildly, was in trouble. Every time she thought she had the upper hand, he went and turned the tables on her. _Is he planning to make a **habit** of this?_ she wondered, sourly, and then let out a sound that was treacherously close to a whine as his tongue flicked across the deepest scratch.  
><em>...Because I could get used to it, to be honest.<em>

Releasing her, the master thief stretched his arms up over his head, shucking jerkin and undershirt in a single smooth motion. He was, she reflected, not for the first time, in truly remarkable shape for a man she suspected of being closer to fifty than forty (granted, Nal supposed, the Skeleton Key _would_ do wonders for one's longevity).

Before she had more than a moment or two to admire, he leaned over her, arching deep as he pressed her down into the mattress. Her nails ghosted against toned muscle and the pale cuneiform of old injuries as he guided her fingers up over his chest. "I need your hands... oh, anywhere," he instructed in a tone that was more moan than sentence. A far cry indeed from the dour Guildmaster who'd glared and snapped orders curtly at her from the other side of his desk. She allowed herself an internal snort of laughter as she obliged the request, tracing a delicate series of lines beneath his collarbone before abruptly reversing the path her fingertips had just taken.

_He did say **anywhere**._

She let her hands smooth down his sides, the planes of his abdomen, before sliding them past the juncture where the Breton's hips met the seam of his leggings. Palming his hip, she blindly followed the angular curve of his pelvic bone, and felt his back tense as she met the warmth and rigidity of his erection. Sarcasm and aggressiveness, nothing; he was practically straining into her hand. She could feel him tremble as she rested her hand just beside his length: tantalizingly close, but not touching.

"Oh, to the Void with this," she heard him say, from somewhere above her, and both his hands abruptly came down on her shoulders. Her head connected solidly against the pillows with a thump and a startled 'oomph'. The grunt rapidly morphed into a cry as he folded in on her, her arms winding beneath his shoulders as he caught her hips and pulled her up to meet him.

Any thoughts she might previously have been entertaining of exacting bloody, stabbing revenge were lost in that joining: the warmth of bodies, the sweet, tactile awareness of skin against skin as she rolled with his thrusts, her face pressed against the stubble of his neck, the earthy smell of sweat mingling with soap and fire and stone. She whimpered into his chest as he found a particularly sweet spot and drove into her, her voice combining with his into a confused tangle of half-formed syllables and inarticulate cries, half-formed before being given voice. Nalvyna wasn't even sure if she was speaking Draconian or the common tongue; didn't particularly care about anything but the bittersweet ache of approaching completion.

Hearing him scream, his arms tightening convulsively around her, legs locked behind her knees as his spine arched back like a strung bow, was easily one of the sweetest things she'd ever heard. Gods, she'd thought she hated him? What a load of tripe.

When they sagged, panting and bone-sore but triumphant, onto the largely-ignored and crumpled sheets, the Dunmer tried to shimmy out from under him, though her sweat-beaded palms had difficulty finding any traction. She found her retreat blocked, in any event, by an arm hooked over her shoulder.

"Where do you think you're going?" Gray hair plastered to his head and dark with moisture, face slack with exhaustion, Mercer nevertheless managed to fix her with a sidelong glare that was, circumstances notwithstanding, almost convincing.

She supposed it was a fair enough question.

Huffing a barely-audible sigh of acquiescence, the dark elf allowed herself to be drawn back against his chest, his heartbeat, at this range, timpani-loud to her sensitive ears.

For a time, both thieves were silent: curled around each other, light skin intertwined against dark, his chin propped against the top of her head. Nal allowed her eyes to droop, though she wasn't dozing, and capitalized on the reprieve to take stock of the situation. A dangerous man, one who could quite possibly destroy her if she allowed him to run around loose, waltzed into her house, and what did she do? Did she hit him over the head with a rock and drag him forcibly back to Riften? _No_. Did she hammer him into fine, red paste by means of the Thu'um? _No_. Did she grab the bone-handled knife from under the pillow and drive it into his wretched, backstabbing heart the moment she knew his attention had been compromised? _Very no_.

Instead, she let him get inside her guard without a fight, and then she slept with him.

Enthusiastically.

Nal groaned inwardly: she was an _idiot_.

"I was following you," Mercer said abruptly, from his position above her head. She could feel the vibration of her vocal cords through her scalp. It tingled, in a manner she didn't find entirely unpleasant. "Caught up with you as you were crossing the border from Hjaalmarch. Thought you should know."

Nal's head would have snapped up if it hadn't been pinioned into its current position by his jaw, his offhand remark hitting her like an electrical shock. He'd been with her for the better part of two days, and she hadn't even _noticed_? She'd had hair-trigger responses to a hawk's shadow passing over the ground, to the rustling of dry leaves, for the better part of six months since taking over the Guild. Clearly, not only was she an idiot, but also a hopeless ice-brain who should not have been given leave to run her own errands, much less Skyrim's criminal underbelly. He could have killed her on the road, several times over, and she wouldn't have even realized he was there.

Wait a second. She repeated the sentence internally, mulling over the words as their implication sank in. Mercer could have killed her. He could have dispatched the woman who had done her best to foul his plans from the minute she'd become aware of them. And yet he'd stayed his hand, when the opportunity to remove both a serious threat, and an icon of the Guild in her own right, was within his reach. What on Tamriel had prompted such a counter-intuitive decision?

"If it makes you feel any better," he added, arching a brow at her facial expression, "I was headed that way already."

It was dishearteningly easy to fall into old patterns with him, she thought, and the realization had a curiously sobering effect. The clothing, the reason for trailing her from Hjaalmarch, his very presence in Markarth- once she thought about it, really _thought_ about it, it was easy for the the last piece of the puzzle to click into place.

Looking sideways into his hard, weatherworn face, her pulse finally reaching something close to normalcy, Nalvyna frowned, propping herself up onto an elbow.

"You're leaving." It wasn't a question.

"I'm leaving," Mercer agreed.

Nal shook her head, not so much denial as an admission of defeat. She could understand avarice; could understand vengeance, spite, and the thrill of the hunt. But she couldn't parse her adversary's motivations beyond the obvious. It would mean always second-guessing herself if he escaped; always looking into the shadows for evidence of his handiwork; formulating counter-strategies should he ever try to move against her. She could see Karliah in the echoes of such cold methodology. You either became stronger, cleverer, more driven than your opponent, or you broke beneath the strain.

At the same time, he'd just handed _her_ a weapon against _him_. She'd only need to inform the Guild that he was alive, and the direction he'd been headed in, and they'd hunt him down like a pack of hounds after a fox.

It was, in a sense, the perfect balance. The perfect challenge.

"I suppose that's why you're the best thief in Skyrim," she muttered begrudgingly under her breath, and jumped in shock as Mercer let loose with a sharp, flinty laugh.

"Finally," he said, raising his hands as if in supplication. "_Finally_, I get you to admit it."

The satisfaction in his voice rankled her, and as usual, her mouth responded before her brain had time to catch up. "Best thief in _Tamriel_, on the other hand, is a title I can aspire to."

Her former Guildmaster pulled back slightly, until he was holding her nearly at arm's length, and fixed the dark elf with a look of profound (she might have said 'pitying', if Mercer had been capable of pity) skepticism.

"Keep dreaming, kid."

Somehow, that opened the floodgates. "You bastard," Nal said through gritted teeth, smacking him in the arm with a closed fist. She might as well have been punching the Breton with a wet noodle, but it was the thought that counted. "You _bastard_. I thought you were _dead_."

She supposed, in an abstract sense, that made them even.

There were other things she wanted to say -things like _are you going to be a problem_, or _what am I supposed to tell the others_- but somehow, they didn't seem as important as she might have thought. Instead, she let out a heavy sigh and let her head fall back onto her arm, eyes lowering until they were little more than copper slits. "If you ever set foot in Skyrim again," she said, drowsiness robbing the warning of its weight, "I'll have to kill you."

Mercer smirked at her: as iconic as any of his facial expressions, and perhaps the one that would last the longest in her memory. "You can _try_."

She knew that it was the best she could expect from him. Mercer Frey didn't apologize, didn't regret, and certainly didn't back down from a challenge. In that last regard, he rather reminded her of someone she knew.

"Master Frey?" The choice of words earned her a quirk of the eyebrow, and Nal returned it with a wry smile. "Shadows hide you."

The last thing she saw, closing her eyes, was a look of genuine surprise. When he spoke (if Nalvyna didn't know any better), she could almost have suspected his voice of containing a hint of actual warmth. "They always do."

Before long, she found herself subsumed in the blackness of sleep.

* * *

><p>Nalvyna awoke to the smell of smoke and warm beeswax. It was a sign that her hour candle had finally burned itself out, which allowed her to place the time at close to seven or eight in the morning. Rolling to a sitting position and scrubbing sleep out of her eyes, the coverlet shifting awkwardly off her shoulders, it took the Dunmer some moments for her mind to catch up with her body and explain why her wrists were sore, and every muscle in her body felt as though she'd just run a marathon. Heat flooded her face from her chest to the tips of her ears, and Nal half-rose from her bed before a low thump and an inarticulate groan from the next room made her pause. It sounded much larger than a rangy Breton, however, even if he was tall for his race.<p>

Her brow furrowed in confusion for a moment, and then the thief's eyes popped wide as she remembered what Mercer had told her the night before.

_Oh, shit_, the Dragonborn thought, instinctively pulling the quilt tight around her shoulders as she hastened over to her chest of drawers; _Argis_.

The burly Nord was curled up on top of his bed when she entered, the knock on his door more for the sake of habit than propriety, and judging by the uncoordinated waving of limbs and low grunts she'd associate with someone who'd spent the evening drinking Markarth dry, whatever substance Mercer had dosed him with hadn't quite worn off yet.

Nal plopped down on the mattress beside her loyal, Cyclopean housecarl, and pulled one of his arms across her shoulders as she helped him sit. "You all right, Legs?"

Argis the Bulwurk clamped his free hand over his face (she'd always suspected the gargantuan appendages had enough span to engulf her entire head) and leaned against her with a sound she could only interpret as 'for the love of the Divines, please whisper'. He cracked two of his fingers apart and glanced blearily down at her with his good eye, face pulling into an expression of bewildered pain. "My Thane?" he rumbled, in a voice two octaves shy of bass. "I don't... what happened?"

Wincing in sympathy, she gave his forearm a gentle, platonic pat. "Guild business." Not even strictly a lie, that. "I'm really sorry, Argis. I'll make sure it never happens again." The Nord looked as if he was about to nod, nearly swooned, and apparently thought better of it. "Can you stand?" the elf hazarded, after giving him a moment to regain his bearings. She could find some of the extra healing potions if the answer was a 'no', she supposed; she was fairly certain there were a few still lying around the manor.

Argis, however, was nothing if not resilient. With a few false starts and practice heaves, he managed to drag himself to his feet, though still relied heavily on Nal's shoulder for support as the two staggered toward the entry hall. She nearly collapsed under the weight of the former Legionary, and tried not to wheeze. Argis was her friend. It was her fault that he was in such a sorry state, and she would just have to grit her teeth and bear it. Her legs were not going to buckle under her, curse them.

"Thane Nalvyna?"

The Dunmer paused as they moved past the fireplace, and she glanced up at her companion in curiosity. His tone had cleared somewhat, and was glancing around at the room in steadily mounting astonishment. "What is it, my friend?" she inquired, following his gaze but seeing nothing. At first.

"Am I seeing things," Argis inquired, slowly, in tones of mounting surprise, "or are all of the decorations gone?"

Nalvyna blinked. And blinked again.

Argis was right. Her display cases were open, conspicuously absent of the the taloned keys of sapphire, emerald, and ruby that had been housed within. The weapon racks lining the walls had been stripped of their adornments, the triple-locked chest that had housed her Daedric artifacts (the Sanguine Rose; Azura's Star) standing open and somewhat forlorn in the far corner. Even the beautiful brocade tapestries -a gift from Jarl Balgruuf, and which she supected of having originally come from Morrowind- were gone.

Nal stood in the middle of the room, one arm supporting her housecarl's waist, and went through a truly stunning impersonation of a landed carp. Her mouth opened and shut, opened and shut, as she turned her head in a slow panorama, and finally turned a deep and outraged shade of black.

_That horrible, wretched, utterly **magnificent** bastard._

"My Thane."

Argis's voice was sharp, urgent, and she snapped her attention to where he was pointing. Stuck in the center of the table, its blade sunk almost an inch into the marble, was an Elven dagger. And pinned beneath its blade, a neatly-folded square of parchment.

It took some effort to work the dagger's tip free of the stone, particularly without simply tearing the piece of paper in half, but between housecarl and Dovahkiin, the task was managed with acceptably minimal damage. Waving Argis off (he had a tendency to loom, and was in her light), Nalvyna unfolded the note, and glanced down at it with a deep, rueful laugh.

"Argis," the dark elf said, not turning around, "I don't know about you, but I think I'm about due for a vacation."

On the top half of the page, there was simply a hastily-penned insignia: three interlocked lines, forming a stylized, open-ended rectangle, a circle imprisoned within its boundaries.

Below it, in Mercer's cramped, utilitarian handwriting, was scribed a single word:

_DAGGERFALL_.

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: Headcanon epilogue, courtesy of yours truly- _A month later, Mercer received a letter by anonymous courier, bearing the stamp of the Nightingales. Within, he found a similar tiny note, on which was written a single sentence._ "Fuck you,"_ the letter read;_ "I stole an Elder Scroll."

_Thus the bar was set for a relationship based solely on one-upmanship and annoying the hell out of each other. And they all lived horribly ever after. THE END._

Yes, Mercer signs his correspondence with Keeper glyphs. I'm horrible, I know.


End file.
